Microsoft Office at Macworld

Sad as it is for some Mac fanatics, Apple's decision to pull out of the Macworld conference after 2009 is probably a good sign. It shows that Apple has grown beyond its niche, trade-show market. I hope that the company will grow in other ways too: redoubling its focus on building secure, elegant software and hardware, possibly at the expense of a few gimmicky "One more thing..."-style announcements.

One of my favorite things to come out of last year's Macworld was Microsoft's A Day at the Office. Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MacBU) hosted a day-long presentation of the new features in Office 2008. Videos from the entire day are now available online (in QuickTime video format, of course) on MacBU's Mac Mojo blog.

In stark contrast to Steve Jobs' smoke-and-mirrors speaking style, this is the sort of product announcement that would make John Hodgman's "I'm a PC" character proud. The MacBU developers went in-depth about design decisions they'd made behind closed doors, reassuring Mac users that they had their best interests at heart. For example, MacBU decided not to borrow the much-hyped Ribbon interface from Office 2007, believing that the interface was incongruous with the Mac environment. MacBU had also chosen to replace Visual Basic for Applications with AppleScript as Office's scripting language, a decision that caused some controversy. The presenters addressed dissenters head-on, saying that they believed they'd made the right decision for the Mac community, but that they were working on workarounds for VBA users (a promise they kept a few months later).

It's all fascinating to me, not only as a design and usability geek, but also as a day-to-day Office user. The videos have taught me many shortcuts and tricks that have made me a more productive worker, both on my PC at work and on my Mac at home.

While you're at the Mac Mojo blog, be sure to read Geoff's 2008 in review post. For more Office for Mac geekiness, check out this amazing discussion of Excel and music theory.

Don't forget that TechSoup Stock carries discounted and donated Mac products from numerous partners, including Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit, and Symantec.

Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

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